Stuck
by elanev91
Summary: They're stuck in the cottage and James is falling apart.


**A tiny piece in honour of my anxiety/depression and treatment that would come with a copay I can't afford to pay.**

 **I feel shit - Jily helps. Enjoy x**

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He's going mad. It seems dramatic, though, so he doesn't talk about it.

He knows that she would listen to him no matter what, tell him that she loves him, that she wishes that it could be different, that she would move heaven and earth and everything in the universe for him if she could. But he doesn't want to worry her with things she can't change. Things that don't really matter.

He knows that she knows anyway.

He can see her watching him as he floats through the cottage, his hands shaking with nervous energy, his eyes flicking repeatedly, wistfully to the windows. He knows that she's watching his dinners go untouched, realises that the boxes of biscuits in the cupboard are suddenly lasting them weeks and weeks instead of the usual two days. He knows that she's tracing the lines of his body with her eyes, watching as the well-worked, hard-earned quidditch muscles get leaner and leaner with each passing day. He knows that she's thinking that he's never been this quiet, not in all the years she's known him, and he feels even more guilty because he knows that his silence is making her worry. It isn't fair for him to avoid talking about it, not when she's suffering through this too.

She always was the stronger one of the two of them - of this, he's acutely aware as she goes the extra mile to drag a laugh out of him, as she goes on and on to Harry about his uncles and Hogwarts and everything that exists outside of the walls of this fucking cottage that he can't bring himself to think about anymore. She's so much stronger than him and he needs her so much and he hopes she understands, but he also worries, obsessively, that she'll think he doesn't care about what she's going through, that he isn't giving her what she needs. He isn't there for her, not like he should be, and that makes him hate himself. He's never hated himself, not really, but there's a first time for everything.

Letting her down is, easily, the worst thing he's ever done. And he's done some terrible things.

He can never, ever be enough for her - he just wants her to know how fucking much he loves her. How her laughs and smiles and jokes and hips bumping against his at the kitchen counter, how all the little things she does keep him from this cliff that he's somehow walked up onto and can't figure out how to escape. She's everything. _Everything._ He doesn't know how to tell her, but he tries.

He tells her, every chance he gets, that he loves her with all the languages he knows. He breathes it into her ear while she's making them tea, traces it into her skin with his fingertips, his lips when they're in bed, leaves it littered around the cottage when he conjures her favourite flowers, folds the laundry the muggle way, makes her favourite things for dinner. It doesn't feel like enough, but he gives her what he can, and on his better days, he gives her every single piece of himself, all his laughs and smiles and cocked eyebrows coming out in full force and reminding her that, somewhere under this blank skin is the man she fell in love with.

He knows she doesn't blame him, she wouldn't - she is kinder than he thought anyone could ever be, and he knows that he doesn't deserve it.

He wants to deserve it. He doesn't know how.

They're sitting on the sofa, she's made them tea, Harry is already in bed because he's been sleeping better and better lately and the dark circles are finally starting to fade under their eyes. He's still not sleeping well, but it's better than it was. They're quiet, like they are a lot now, but somehow she doesn't seem to mind and he worries that she's harbouring this resentment, that she can't wait for this war to be over so she can just escape him already, but then she looks over at him and smiles, slings her legs up on his lap, tangles her fingers in his hair, leans over and presses a kiss to his cheek -

"I love you."

She always... she always knows what he needs to hear. He doesn't know how, but it always, always happens and he leans his head into her hand and sends her a small smile before it falls off his lips, he takes a sip of his tea. His chest _hurts_ and he doesn't have the words to even begin to describe it, but he wants to try. He wants her to know where he's at, wants her to understand, needs her to know that he loves her as much, _more,_ than he ever has in his entire life, but that every day that goes by, he's starting to feel like he isn't telling her enough, like he doesn't know how to tell her because he doesn't know who he _is_ anymore.

He tells her, slowly at first, but once the words start pouring out of his mouth, they don't stop. A few minutes in and he's crying and he doesn't quite know why but his head is pounding, his chest hurts even more than it did before, his lungs feel like they're trying to collapse, squeeze all the air out of themselves, and her hands take the mug out of his hands, set it on the table, she pulls him into her arms and he falls apart. He's not saying anything even remotely coherent anymore, but she doesn't seem to mind and the sounds, because they can't really be called words, coming out of his mouth make the vice crushing his ribs feel like it's getting looser and looser the more he talks. She's just moving her fingers gently though his hair and listening, the sound of her heart thrumming away under his ear reminding him that she's there, they're alive, they're okay, the feel of her arm wrapped around his waist keeps him from falling off the cliff that he's teetering on the edge of, helps him figure out, as he rambles, how to start climbing back down.

He's not okay. But she always was the stronger of the two of them and she's making him feel better. She's saving him.

He tells her that he's worried she hates him, that he's destroying them with every frown, every minute of quiet, every lonely awful thought that drags through his head and she just tells him over and over that she loves him, that nothing would ever make her not love him, because they are nothing without one another and she needs him to remember that because no matter what she will always, _always_ be there for him until the end of time, she wants him to talk to her about this more, she can't bear to see him like this.

Eventually, he isn't sure how long it's been but time has meant very little to them since they'd been locked up in the cottage anyway, he stops crying, his head stops pounding, his breathing slows to a calmer, steadier rate. He pulls back, looks at her, holds her face in his hands and thanks her with all the words he knows, but she just smiles against his lips and tells him she loves him. It's everything.


End file.
